Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Today we have the memorial of a woman who accepted God's invitation, who accepted the invitation of Jesus to leave everything and follow Him. And so this rich woman entered the kingdom of heaven, as indeed probably did her close relatives, who were known for their philanthropy.
She was born in 1858 to one of the wealthiest families in Philadelphia. Her father, Francis, shared ownership of an international banking empire with his two brothers. He was a devout Catholic. The family attended daily Mass, and he recognized that his riches had been entrusted to him for the common good. Therefore, they were famous not only for their wealth, but also for their philanthropy, which was genuine charity.
Catherine was the couple's second child. Her sister Elizabeth had been born three years before. Their mother, Hannah, died of encephalitis a little over a month after Catherine's birth. A year and a half later, her father married Emma Bouvier. She was 26, ten years his junior. If her last name sounds familiar, it's because she's the great-great-aunt of JFK's wife, Jacqueline. She gave birth to the family's third daughter, Louise, three and a half years later.
The girls grew up in luxury, privately taught by the best tutors and enjoying trips to Europe. Emma taught them practical skills like sewing and managing a household. When the girls were old enough, they took turns running the household, which would have had a staff of servants.
When St. Catherine was 11, she received confirmation of communion from the Bishop of Philadelphia. Later that year, Mr. Drexel brought the family a summer home in the countryside, which he dedicated to St. Michael. Emma saw the need there for catechesis in the neighborhood, so she set up a Sunday school in their home. For two hours every Sunday when they were there, Elizabeth, now 14 when they started, taught the older children while St. Catherine taught the younger ones. This went on for years, with fifty or more children attending. Already the future Foundress was gaining experience in teaching as well as in management.
In 1872, Father James O'Connor, an Irish missionary, was assigned as pastor of St. Dominic's, the parish in which that summer home was located. He became St. Catherine's spiritual director. In 1876, he was appointed vicar apostolic of Nebraska and was consecrated bishop. Thereafter, spiritual direction continued by letter. When the Diocese of Omaha was erected in 1879, he became its first bishop.
That year, Catherine turned 21 and made her debut in Philadelphia society. There was much matchmaking, but Mr. Drexel was concerned that someone might want to marry one of his daughters just for her money and not really out of love. Also, in 1879, Emma fell ill with cancer. St. Catherine nursed her, her stepmother, tenderly until her death at the end of January 1882. This experience brought home to her that all the millions that the family had couldn't relieve Emma's pain or prevent her death.
While she was being courted by various young men, she was considering religious life, but she couldn't make up her mind. On the one hand, she recognized that it was better to be a nun. After all, as we heard in the Gospel, "If you want to be perfect, go sell what you have and give to the poor." On the other hand, she didn't know, but while recognizing that it was more perfect, on the other hand, she didn't know if she would be able to live the life of privation that religious life would involve after having grown up in luxury.
She wrote about her doubts to her spiritual director, Bishop O'Connor. On his advice, she made an annual vow of chastity until she came to a decision about her vocation. Her diary from those years shows the sources that nourished her spiritual life, the Bible, the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, and especially the writings of Frederick William Faber.
A couple of years after Emma's death, Mr. Drexel took his three daughters with him on a train tour of the Northwest. They were touched by the plight of the Native Americans they saw. The Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions became St. Catherine's favorite treasury, or favorite charity, rather.
On February 15th of the following year, 1885, Francis Drexel died. His estate was worth over $15 million. In terms of purchasing power, that's nearly half a billion dollars today. He left a tenth of it to various charities. The rest went into a trust fund whose income would be divided annually among his surviving daughters. It was also to provide income for any children they might have in the future. In 1955, when all the beneficiaries were deceased, the remaining $14 million was given to the charities specified in the will. The daughters continued to give generously to charity themselves.
In 1886, Catherine became ill. On the suggestion of her doctors, she went with her sisters to a spa in Germany for treatment. There, she recovered, and afterwards, the three sisters traveled around Europe, seeking missionaries from Europe, for the U.S. Indian missions. In Venice, an image of Our Lady seemed to come alive for a moment, and Catherine heard the words, "Freely you have received, freely give." In Rome, they had an audience with Pope Leo XIII. St. Catherine spoke of her desires and plans and begged the Pope to send more missionaries to serve Blacks and Native Americans in the United States. He leaned forward with a confidential knowing tone and asked, "Why not become a missionary yourself, my child?" That was in January 1887.
In the fall of that year, the Drexel sisters visited the Indian missions again, this time the ones in the Dakotas, and they were appalled at the misery they witnessed. Within four years, St. Catherine had funded the construction of 13 mission schools. Over a 20-year period, she and her sisters contributed over a million and a half dollars to the Catholic education of Native Americans.
She had been corresponding about her vocation for years now with Bishop O'Connor. Initially, he had counseled her that she didn't have the health necessary to become a religious, but she felt increasingly drawn to it, and he finally agreed that her determination seemed firm enough. But then he made the frightening suggestion that she found a new order to help Native Americans and Blacks. He explained why he had become certain that this was her vocation, indeed, more certain of this vocation than of his own. The need for such an order was clear. She had the financial means, a love for Native Americans and Blacks, and a taste and capacity for the work that this would involve. All these were clear signs that God had prepared her for this purpose.
On the feast of St. Joseph in 1889, she made a retreat in which she received the grace to accept her call. She needed to go through formation with an existing community before founding her own. Bishop O'Connor chose the novitiate of the Sisters of Mercy in Pittsburgh, a community that his brother Michael, Bishop of Pittsburgh, had brought into his diocese. St. Catherine took the veil on November 7, 1889. An heiress giving up a fortune by taking a vow of poverty was a story the newspapers couldn't pass up, and I imagine this helped publicize the new order that she was founding.
Around the same time, her blood sisters married, Louise in January of 1889 and Elizabeth in January of 1890. The novice mistress, or St. Catherine's novice mistress, said that none of her 80 novices came close to Catherine Drexel in humility. No small accomplishment for the daughter of a millionaire used to having servants.
The period of her formation was very eventful. In May 1890, her spiritual director died. Now she could no longer turn to him with her doubts and was left alone with them. In September, her sister, Elizabeth, died together with her premature baby due to complications of pregnancy, perhaps an ectopic pregnancy. Since she died without children, the annual income from the trust would now be divided among the two surviving daughters.
St. Sister Mary Catherine, Catherine Drexel made her first profession on February 12, 1891, as the Foundress of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People. Thirteen other sisters made their profession together with her as founding members. Philadelphia Archbishop Patrick J. Ryan received their vows. He was now the one who was advising St. Catherine and would assist her over the years in founding missions and setting up convents all over the United States. He gave her special permission to retain and administer her goods under ecclesiastical authority. This was important because she would need them for the Order and for its mission.
Her first step was to buy property near Philadelphia in Cornwall Heights and begin building a novitiate there. The first group lived near there in her summer home. The Sisters of Mercy supplied a novice mistress for the first year and Father Scully, a Jesuit from Philadelphia, gave monthly conferences and served as spiritual director for the community. It grew to 21 by the end of the first year.
When Bishop Ryan felt the Order had sufficiently grown and matured, they began opening missions. The first was a boarding school in St. Catherine's Mission in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1894. Father Tolton, the first black priest in the Diocese of Chicago, had already written in appreciation of their goals in 1891 when they first started. Later, her sisters built a school and a church for blacks in his parish of St. Monica.
In 1907, on St. Francis Xavier Cabrini's advice, St. Catherine went to Rome to seek St. Pius X's approval for the Order that she had developed. He granted preliminary approval when definitive approval came in 1913. But in 1912, St. Catherine caught typhoid fever while visiting a mission. She readily volunteered to treat the sick. This was among the many mortifications she embraced in her religious life. It seemed that the end had come for her, but against expectations, she recovered and returned to work.
In 1915, Xavier University was begun in New Orleans to serve blacks. Over 60 missions and schools were established and maintained by her Order during her lifetime. In 1935, she had a heart attack, though she survived, she no longer had the health to be Mother Superior and toured around the country visiting missions. So she spent the next 20 years in retirement and prayer.
She died at 97 on March 3, 1955 at the Mother House in Cornwall Heights. At her death, there were over 500 sisters in her Order. They had five convents to serve Indians and 40 to serve blacks. St. John Paul II beatified her in 1988 and canonized her in the year 2000, making her the second native-born American to be canonized.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.